24/01/2008

bec and i went to bjork last night - wow. a technofile's wet dream if ever there was one. the actual band consisted of two electronics guys, though each with their own separate setups, a drummer (chris corsano, who actually is much more of a percussionist than a traditional drummer in his technique - lots of scraping and little gong-bells etc), a keyboardist, then a 10 piece brass band/backing vocalist section. but of most note here was the electronics. mark stent, who has produced much of her greatest stuff, was one of the electronics guys. part of his setup was one of those round touch screen synth things you sent me a youtube link to a couple of years ago. but on the big screens to the side of the stage, and also on large tv screens on stage, was vision from an overhead camera on it, so you could see what he was doing with it to generate the sound. and when he wasn't on that, both electronics guys had other touchscreen controllers which functioned basically like our controllers do, but were all glowing touchscreens which changed format from song to song so that sometimes they were basically just volume faders, at others they controlled filters like in the little box on the bottom left of ableton when we load in fx etc. then there were kaos pads etc, all of which were filmed from above and cut in to the big screen footage. it made the process very tangible. the whole set was actually incredibly physical. sometimes, it almost sounded like pure white noise being filtered with a backbeat. and of course there was bjork. the brass section/backing vocals were good too, and gave her a wide scope to flip between heavy electronics and much more organic stuff.

sufjan stevens was excellent in a very cerebral manner. bjork was excellent in an incredibly physical manner. it's been a good couple of weeks for gigs. the only problem being that battles did their only sideshow last night as well, so couldn't be seen. oh, and i was out of town when tunng was on.

i got some new screen mesh today which is incredibly fine so we can now screenprint as much detail as we want.

my only problem with a poster format for the inside would be a budget one - i don't have access to any full colour printing larger than a4, and i think you'd probably want full colour for those images. do you want to do your own version of that cover i did, or are you happy for me to play with it? i kind of did a quick thing because i had a vague idea. i've thought also of the possibility of having more of the blue stuff, maybe smaller ones, or non uniform parts to it, rather than just the two circles, which were just the first thought.

as to a launch show, i don't have anything planned. i'm holding off until there's actually an album. in terms of how the live set up will eventually be, i'm fairly certain now that there'll be about 4 other people to fill the gaps you leave, 3 singing and possibly playing simple instrumentation, and 1 (hopefully steve) on digital bits.

play around with the album track order and give me any suggestions - you are much better at that aspect than me.

p.s. i got a comment on my school blog to a post i made about the artwork of matthew collings. i've got a reasonable idea it's actually from matthew collings himself, or possibly his wife, emma briggs, the two of whom collaborate on all their paintings.

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Telafonica is a group of musicians, visual artists, graphic designers and delay pedals. Starting as a duo, the group has evolved into a complex web of permanent and transient members and a handful of regular extra contributers spread across the globe. In all media, Telafonica focuses on a fusion of cutting edge technologies and hand made, traditional techniques and aesthetics.